


Keine Angst, ich weck' dich nicht

by Neurotoxia



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Amnesia, M/M, Memory Loss, implied gaslighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27980025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurotoxia/pseuds/Neurotoxia
Summary: The pieces of Cloud’s shattered mind don’t fit back together quite right.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	Keine Angst, ich weck' dich nicht

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicago_ruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicago_ruth/gifts).



“Honey, I’m home,” Zack sing-songs just as the door snaps shut behind him, followed by the tell-tale click of three locks.

“Shoes off,” Cloud says automatically, and listens to Zack stopping, backtracking and the heavy thump of steel-toed boots meeting the floor. 

He prods at the potato and mushroom stew simmering on the burner in front of him, finally satisfied with the thickness of it. Within the past months, Cloud has gotten pretty decent at throwing meals together from almost anything. It‘s a lot of stews, but they’re filling and stretch well. Cloud grew up on stews and hearty soups, a staple of the Northern cooking that stuck around even when food scarcity in the winter wasn’t a problem any longer. There’s something nostalgic about preparing dishes he remembers his mother making, but it’s saving Gil above all. Only lately has Zack been making some actual money instead of getting paid in exposure, and sometimes, food. 

If Cloud could work, they could be making a good living now, but he can barely lift a sword without getting winded in two minutes. The Twin Stinger that Zack got him as a replacement for his lost weapon sits in a corner, going unused. Channelling materia gives him a splitting headache, even at low levels. Just going out to the shops takes it out of him.

“Smells good,” Zack says, pressing a kiss to the back of Cloud‘s neck with an appreciative hum.

Zack always tries to make Cloud feel good about staying home, but his praise tends to bounce off Cloud. He‘s an ex-SOLDIER First Class, and simmering potatoes taxes him. There‘s nothing good about it.

Zack says Cloud can’t help that he got attacked with high-level Shinra weaponry, but Zack got attacked, too, and seems to have regained his health and strength in no time. Cloud is weaker than a kitten, gets migraines, and still hasn’t recovered from the memory loss. 

The holes in his memory worry him most of all. The last thing he remembers is the trip to Nibelheim with Zack and Sephiroth. And not even all of that. Years are wiped from his past.

Even Zack, usually more than willing to chatter on just about anything, clamps up when Cloud asks about it. So far, the account Cloud has received of the past few years can be called barebones at best. Pressing for details ends in Zack asking Cloud to drop it. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and the amount of hurt Cloud sees in Zack’s face when it happens causes him not to push. He doesn’t want to drag out bad memories for Zack – but at least Zack has memories, and there’s times when Clouds resents him for it, silly as it is.

Lately, he‘s been having flickers of memories. If they‘re memories at all. They‘re jumbled, confused, half-formed pictures, and they could just as well be hallucinations his mind conjures up to deal with the trauma. There‘s a lot of an eerie green glow that Cloud associates with Mako, and a sensation of being underwater.

Cloud has never brought it up with Zack, even though he‘s worried it‘s a sign of lasting brain damage. 

“How was work?” Cloud asks, eager to get his mind off the glum reality of his broken brain.

“Went well,” Zack hums and digs their bowls out of the cupboard above the stove. “Couple odd jobs, and a few more lined up for tomorrow.”

He has to stretch above Cloud to get there, pressing against his back and Cloud, almost on reflex, breathes Zack‘s scent in like a guilty pleasure. He smells of fresh sweat, woodsmoke and the cheap shampoo he uses. Cloud can feel the hard muscle of Zack‘s chest and stomach through the thin shirt and resists pressing back against it. 

Sometimes, he still finds it hard to believe that they‘re together. He remembers his crush on Zack, and then he comes around from a coma to Zack as his boyfriend. It would be a lot for anybody. Zack is vague on how long exactly they‘ve been together, but Cloud figures it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t remember it anyway.

“I nearly walked into a couple Turks this morning,” Zack then says and hands Cloud the chipped green earthenware. “I’ll stay out of Sector Four for a while. Third time I’ve seen them there in the last two weeks.”

“Mhm,” Cloud hums in agreement and spoons the stew into the bowls while Zack goes rummaging for bread.

Zack stays well away from the Turks. He’s never too concerned about running into low ranking security, who likely wouldn’t recognise a former SOLDIER, arrest warrant or not. And even if they did, knocking out a few to get away wouldn’t pose a problem. But Turks would know him, he always says. And they’d be a lot harder to shake off. They’re involved in recruiting and meant to look for those Shinra wants arrested quietly. Deserted First Class SOLDIERs look bad for them, particularly after losing all of their recruitment poster boys. Sephiroth most of all. 

Cloud doesn’t know why they’ve deserted. Zack says that they couldn’t stand for the shady things Shinra were doing any longer, but doesn’t elaborate when Cloud asks what exactly those shady things were. Shinra not being squeaky clean is not news; Cloud knew this before he even signed up. Zack just says that something wasn’t right after Nibelheim and that he’ll tell him when the time is right.

Nibelheim. That’s what he wants to remember most, Cloud thinks with a wistful twinge and sets the bowls on the old kotatsu Zack got in lieu of payment from a job last month. He sticks his feet under the duvet covering it and enjoys the warmth seeping into his feet and legs. The weather is turning colder, and their little flat just outside Wall Market is drafty.

Zack hands Cloud a small wicker basket with bread rolls, pecks him on the lips, and then crawls under the duvet across the table from Cloud, already reaching for his spoon with the excited face of a hungry man just about to dig in.

“It’s really good!” Zack exclaims after his first mouthful. 

“Thanks,” Cloud mutters around a chunk of bread and rewards Zack with a quick smile.

Cloud at least tries to be appreciative of Zack’s genuine compliments, and not to look at it as Zack praising him for being half a step above useless while Zack does the actual work. It’s not how Zack looks at it, and Cloud knows that, it’s just not easy to always remember. Zack took care of him after Cloud was incapitated by the attack. Taking care of Zack is only fair.

Cloud sometimes thinks he remembers the attack, bits of it at least. There are blurry impressions of watching Zack fight Shinra troops, but Cloud doesn’t understand why he always sees himself as a passive figure watching on instead of fighting himself. Is this impression of after he got so badly injured but before he slipped into the coma?

If he at least had some scars to pinpoint the extent of his injuries, but even of those he’s devoid. If you looked at his body, no bullets appear to have hit him, though they must have. The troops fight with guns. When Cloud raised it with Zack, he shrugged and said the Mako must have taken care of it.

But Zack has scars, and some of them are clearly from fairly recent bullet wounds. The Mako never took care of the scar on Zack’s cheek either nor of any other of his assortment of scars that Cloud has now had plenty of opportunities to look at and touch. Mako affects everyone a little differently, Zack says and dodges any probing why Cloud has scars he didn’t have before his memory goes blank.

There are puncture marks from large needles dotted around the crooks of his elbow and the backs of his hands, and even a few at the pulse point of his neck. Mako injections, supposedly, and since Zack has those marks, too, it made sense to Cloud at the time. But Cloud doesn’t remember seeing them on Zack back when he was still in the troops. Sure, Zack is most likely right in saying that Cloud probably never came close enough to him back then to notice, but Zack was nothing if not overly familiar even then. And there’s the long, thin pale line running from his sternum almost down to his navel that Zack says is from surgery to save him, though to Cloud it looks older than a few months.

Zack has a similar one, but he says it’s not from any surgery but from a cut he got training with Sephiroth where Masamune practically sliced his shirt clean off him. It doesn’t look like an accidental slash with a sword, too centered and deliberate. Sephiroth was hailed for his precision with a blade, but that only makes him cutting someone in training less likely. Then again, Sephiroth appeared to not have been the man they all thought he was. To Cloud’s ears, the whole thing still sounds like a fable.

Sephiroth setting Nibelheim on fire, killing the locals in a mad rampage. And Cloud killing him? Killing him and getting promoted into SOLDIER for it. Cloud doesn’t feel like a SOLDIER, much less First Class, but he has the Mako, and despite being weak now, Cloud knows his body is altered. His reflexes are faster, his senses sharper. If he _were_ able to hold a sword, he’d probably be a lot quicker and stronger than he remembers. SOLDIER First Class. Hard to believe, but why else would he be like this?

“Anything fun happening in the Market today?” Zack asks as he laps up the last of the stew with the bread, looking away from the small TV they’ve got sitting in the corner.

Their flat overlooks most of Wall Market, and while it’s the busiest at night, even during the day there’s never a shortage of people to watch. The Market makes it an undesirable area to live in if you don’t work there or for Don Corneo, but the rent is cheap – you just have to be willing to put up with a commotion at night and keep an eye out for burglars. Wall Market also comes with the distinct advantage of less Shinra personnel stalking around, which had been Zack’s main reason for choosing Sector Six over the cheaper areas of Five or Seven.

“Just a couple of fistfights,” Cloud says and shrugs. Zack pulls a face. “Looked like Corneo’s men roughing up people.”

Don Corneo rules Wall Market down to the last brick. Even they have to pay protection money to the Don, collected by one of his goons every month like clockwork. The first time, Cloud had to convince Zack to just pay instead of punching the slimy collector in the throat. They couldn’t afford to invite the scrutiny of someone like Don Corneo.

“I might have to stay out into the night tomorrow for a job,” Zack says and clambers around the kotatsu to sidle up to Cloud. He slings an arm around Cloud’s shoulders and pulls him into his chest. “Don’t go out late, okay?”

Cloud suppresses the urge to sigh. Zack frets about Cloud walking around alone to a degree that’s bordering on unhealthy. At the beginning he wouldn’t let Cloud go out alone at all, and Cloud had to put his foot down to get Zack to relent. Cloud can’t stare at the wall all day when he could at least go out to the shops, or sometimes, just go _out_ before the walls close in on him. Wall Market is fairly quiet during the day, and not much more dangerous than anywhere else in the slums. Cloud doesn’t go out alone at night, if he can help it. He’s in no state to take on gang members or criminals if they decide to harass him, and Zack gets upset when he comes home late to find Cloud gone. 

The last time, Zack damn near blew up Cloud’s phone with messages. All Cloud had done was go to the pharmacy for some headache relief. Zack met him at the corner of the street to walk him home, and he looked pale and on the edge of panic. Like Cloud would wink out of existence if Zack didn’t know Cloud’s location at all times. Now Cloud sends Zack a text when he goes out after dark, and when he’s back home. He supposes he can understand to some degree. Cloud almost died not too long ago and Zack isn’t shy about admitting that he doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Cloud. On these occasions, like he has to make sure that Cloud is real, and alive, and _his_ , Zack takes Cloud to bed and pushes him to the absolute brink of what Cloud’s body can withstand in its current state. 

The exhausted sleep Cloud falls into after, brings him the most vivid flashes of memories. _Or hallucinations_. He’s dreamed of Zack floating in a tank. Of people in lab coats working in a brick-lined room that looked nothing like Shinra tower. Of seeing the burnt out houses of Nibelheim through a hazy fog. 

Cloud wants to see more, all the time. He wants his memories back.

“If I promise not to go out, what do I get in return?” he finally answers Zack and sneaks his fingers under the waistband of Zack’s trousers and underwear.

Sometimes, he feels dishonest, seducing Zack to maybe ferret out another shred of memories in the aftermath, but it’s not like he’s doing it only for that reason. He’s in love with Zack to a degree that makes him stare out of the window with a stupid smile at times, just because he thought of Zack at that moment. The bits and pieces of memories are a bonus. An addictive one.

“You’re terrible,” Zack laughs, but he doesn’t take Cloud’s hand away from where it’s cupping Zack’s cock, which is starting to take an interest.

“But you like it?” Cloud asks with a grin, the now familiar warmth of having all of Zack’s attention on him spreading through him.

“You got that right,” Zack replies, and gathers Cloud up like a bundle of laundry to carry him to their bed.

* * *

Cloud dozes off almost as soon as Zack rolls off of him. He’s only just aware of Zack cleaning them up in a perfunctory manner before he settles under the covers of their narrow bed.

He huddles close to Zack, winding himself under the other’s arm and settling his head on Zack’s chest. Zack gathers him closer and presses a kiss to Cloud’s temple, muttering something like _good night_ into Cloud’s hair before his breathing evens out. Cloud follows only moments behind.

_Cloud is on a cold, rough floor, small pebbles digging in his thighs and and bottom, but he feels no pain. He doesn’t feel anything at all. Zack is crouching in front of him, face cast in sharp relief by the flickering light of a small campfire. He’s talking, but nothing really reaches Cloud, whose brain feels like it’s wrapped in cotton wool. What did they do to you, Cloud understands, and the pressure of Zack’s hand against his cheek registers somewhere in the back of his fogged mind._

_They’re in the back of a truck, rough terrain shaking them every so often. Cloud is tucked between bales of hay, cushioning his unresponsive body. Zack looks thinner, and like he hasn’t slept properly in a long time, greyish circles rimming his worried eyes. But he’s smiling when he looks at Cloud. Bits and pieces of the conversation float by Cloud, Zack speaks of going to Midgar, finding work and shelter._

_He’s on a cold metal slab surrounded by people in lab coats, burning pain lighting up every nerve in his body. One scientist speaks to another with their shoulders hunched, bowing in apology. There’s talking, but he can’t hear it, it’s all buzzing in his ears. The other scientist waves his hand in a dismissive gesture, stepping closer to the slab. Professor Hojo -- the famous researcher’s long hair and glasses are unmistakable. The look on his face is full of scorn. His lips move, and suddenly Cloud is being moved, hands grabbing him and the pain shoots up his spine. As he’s held upright, Cloud’s blurry gaze scans the lines of tanks along the walls, stopping dead when he sees a familiar face floating in a tank close by. Zack, he thinks, and panic wells._

Cloud shoots up from his dream, heart hammering in his throat. Instinctively, he clamps a hand over his mouth, stifling the whimper that threatens to escape.

These were the clearest impressions yet, overwhelming in its vividness.

What _was_ that?

The last one stays with him in particular, he can still feel the pain searing through him, can still see Zack floating in the tank. It has to be a hallucination, a nightmare. His brain is working through the trauma of the memory loss and putting things together in a jumbled mess. None of it makes sense. It has to be hallucinations.

As much as the logical part of his mind repeats it to him, Cloud’s gut isn’t placated by it.

He’s been wondering why he never dreams of anything of what Zack has told him. Never of being in SOLDIER, never of going on campaigns, or to the labs in Shinra Tower. Doesn’t ever see them taking the bikes out, or what kind of sword he used to carry.

Something just isn’t right.

“You okay?” Zack mumbles from between the pillows and sheets, voice heavy with sleep, His fingers fish for Cloud’s hand and squeeze when they find their target.

Cloud bites his lip, turning to look over his shoulders at Zack, who is looking at Cloud with half-lidded eyes, smiling. The sight of it clenches Cloud’s heart, and he feels guilty for even thinking that Zack could lie to him about something so enormous. Zack, whom he loves, and who loves Cloud in return. He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, but he’s afraid to push Zack. And not just because he doesn’t want to dig up bad memories for Zack. Cloud’s afraid that he might be right.

“Yes,” he answers, voice raw, and lies back again, turning to Zack who envelops him in his arms.

He can’t admit he’s not okay.

Not yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Einstürzende Neubauten's "Stella Maris"


End file.
